Obama like Rock N’ Roll - Out of Ideas

By TRB

I have a few things to get off my chest this morning, among them is Obama’s decision to wait until after he is elected - if he is elected – in 2012 to get all the troops out of Afghanistan. He promises to withdraw troops up until that time, but that’s not really the point. Most Americans don’t believe we should be there in the first place.They don’t believe there is a purpose for the war. They don’t believe young people and Afghanistan’s people who die in the war do so for anything of substance. A decade ago the U.S. went into Afghanistan looking for Osama bin Laden. We just recently got him, killed him in Pakistan. But we have found other excuses to stay put in Afghanistan. Now we claim to be training their army to fight off the inevitable invasion of Afghanistan by terrorists should we leave.At least that is the story the Defense Dept. is selling, without a shred of evidence to back the claim, and the Obama Administration is buying. My belief is that most people don’t think about Afghanistan unless they have a loved- one there. Right now there are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan. And there are 90,000 contractors, make that mercenaries, shooting at goat herds and having a great time making memories for their golfing escapades in the future.

We are paying billions for what is basically a colonialist venture into a country where some will claim we are welcome, but most will claim we are not. Afghanistan’s prime minister is mentally ill and on drugs and does not like us. He regularly makes speeches threatening us while we are there dying for him and his people. It’s the country next-door, Pakistan, producing all of the terrorists, not Afghanistan.

When we found Osama bin Laden he was where he could most easily be reached, in Pakistan , which offers a safe harbor to most of the terrorists in this world, and enjoys “favored nation” status with the U.S. It will be a shame to see Obama go down in 2012 over this stupid war, but I am afraid that’s going to happen. Most people I know who voted for Obama in the last election will not vote for him in this one. Record unemployment. Sneaky government deals with Wall Street and the banks. Trouble everywhere you look.

He needs all of the black vote and a good chunk of the white. It is not going to happen.

Has rock n’ roll died or is it on life support? The reason I ask is because I have watched rock n’ roll over the past half-century, and during that time, it has always gone forward into another style or into another movement. It’s gone from rockabilly, frankly, all the way to Rap and in between where there are at least 40, some would argue even more styles of rock ‘n roll that helped propel it forward as a cultural force. It has become a spanking 60, but when you look at what is out there today in the club scene and on record, you have to wonder, has rock had anything left since 1980? We’ve seen groups emerge like U2. REM, The Clash. Rage Against the Machine and others that would leave you with the impression that rock was still evolving. Adding to that, Rap music an urban outgrowth of rhythm and blues, soul and rock pulsing behind a patina of colloquial poetry was the most important new style of music with Rock roots in the past two decades.

So why is the New York City club scene packed with bands who have been around for 30 years or so? Nothing really new is happening. The same can be said of Los Angeles, except the bands are younger and usually better looking. Europe and the UK have not produced anything noteworthy or at least newsworthy, in a long time. So the ultimate question for rock n’ roll is what’s new, and I don’t mean in product delivery systems and packaging, where Rock’s efforts seem most evident these days. There was a time when we all believed that Rock was some kind of indestructible cultural force that would never die. My argument at this point is that Rock is not dead. It is simply out of ideas.

Okay, one more thing about the Afghanistan-Pakistan mess. The other day when our Special Forces soldiers and some CIA officers paid bin Laden a visit at his luxury fortress in Pakistan, it was discovered that his bodyguard had the director of Pakistan’s intelligence division on his cell phone speed dial. Further, the Pakistan government gave us – their “friends” - the hardest time they could in the retrieval of one of our helicopters that crashed in bin Laden’s driveway. The helicopter contained top secret equipment that “our friends” in Pakistan no doubt wanted.

They are supposed to be an ally. We pay them billions of dollars every year. We should stop paying them. If just one person is out of work in the towns in which we live, Pakistan should not get one penny of aid and it really is that simple. Fighting a war we don’t have to fight, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in Pakistan, while demolishing breakfast programs for poor children here at home makes no sense at all. And it will be Obama’s undoing.